


Armistice (The Nothing Else Matters Remix)

by Sineala



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Noir, New Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Action, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Angst, Community: cap_ironman, DreamVision, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamsharing, Happy Ending, Identity Issues, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Remix, Romance, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5938774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1944. Captain America lies dreaming, trapped in his own mind, and only Tony Stark can save him. But this is no mere Marvels adventure, as Tony finds when he enters Steve's dreams. Tony is confronted with dreams of superheroes, an imagined future fantastic and terrifying in equal parts, and a Steve Rogers who knows both too much and nothing at all about him. But they're just dreams. The war is what's real... isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Welcome to the Afterlife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dreams of War, Dreams of Liars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2907923) by [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/teaberryblue). 



> Written for Cap-IM Remix, this is a 616/Noir remix of teaberryblue's 616/MCU Inception fusion [Dreams of War, Dreams of Liars](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2907923).
> 
> In the same vein as Tea's original story, this is a dreamsharing story where the dreamsharing is sort of like the film _Inception_ and sort of like Tiberius Stone's DreamVision (from Iron Man v3), but not a straight-up version of either canon. (You don't need to know either one, although it's probably more fun if you do.) However, this story doesn't have exactly the same dreamsharing rules as Tea's original; I suppose, then, that I remixed the dreamsharing too.
> 
> Given that the original story title is a Metallica lyric, I went with a different Metallica song for the parenthetical half of the title. The chapter titles of the story are stolen from relevant comics issues; sources are in the end notes.
> 
> My betas were [kalashia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kalashia) and [magicasen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/magicasen). Thanks to [gwyneth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth) (for Jell-O and floristry advice), [morphia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/morphia) (for medical advice about things one definitely should not try at home), and to [phoenixmetaphor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixmetaphor) (for cheerleading and yelling with me about 1980s Iron Man comics).
> 
> CONTENT ADVISORY: Discussion of past canonical alcoholism. Use of fictional IV drugs and other medical procedures in medical settings; other fictional drug injections in, uh, action settings. No permanent character death, but there's a whole lot of Inception-style death in dreams. Let me know if you need any more specific information.

The room was bright and airy; it was a little bare of decoration for Tony's tastes, as these things went, but he supposed that it was what one could expect from a military hospital. It was clean, freshly-scrubbed, and the bed in the center of the room had been made with the usual precision, all neat corners and starched sheets folded back. The man in the bed lay there, eyes shut, his chest rising and falling slowly with each breath, so slowly that Tony could practically count another breath of his own between every one. Sunlight played across his face. He was still handsome, but a little older than Tony remembered him -- it had been a couple of years -- and his hair haloed gold around his head, caught by the light. Tony had seen him without the cowl maybe three times. He'd forgotten, really, that the man underneath was as handsome as all that.

It was a nice room, but it was a hell of a place to die. Especially for Captain America.

The three other men in the room looked up, and the repulsor pump in Tony's chest lurched and juddered with the shock of it. There was General Fury, and of course Bucky Barnes, and--

"Absolutely not," Tony said, stabbing two fingers in the air in the direction of-- of-- he couldn't even let himself think the name. "Nick, you utter bastard, you said _nothing_ about him being here."

Fury stared back, unmoved; his good eye didn't so much as blink. "Would you have come if I had?"

And Tiberius Stone, gorgeous as always, seductive as poisoned wine, was grinning at him.

"Now, Tony," Ty said, with a smile like he hadn't paid any mind to Tony's reaction, "is that any way to treat your old--"

"Shut up," Tony hissed at Ty, because he really didn't want to know how Ty was going to finish that sentence with Fury present. He suspected it wasn't going to be good for his chances of future government work. He turned back to Fury. "I am _not_ working with him."

Fury just kept looking at him. "I confess that I haven't read all your adventures," he said, "but, luckily, Cap and Bucky are big fans."

And then there was Bucky, still in uniform, tears soaking into his mask, stepping into Tony's field of vision and holding out an issue of Marvels. _Tony Stark and DreamVision_ , it read.

Oh.

Captain America was asleep.

Captain America was _dreaming_.

Goddammit, not again.

They couldn't ask him to do this again, Tony thought, and cold sweat beaded on his skin. Hair prickled on the back of his neck; the prickling went all the way down his spine.

They literally couldn't -- there was nothing left. They had to know that.

"I'm still not exactly sure where you're going with this," Tony said, "but whatever you want me to do in the good captain's mind, you'd need a machine first. And if you'd read the story in Marvels, you'd know that after I made it out of my nightmares I destroyed all of the DreamVision prototypes belonging to Mr. Stone here."

He stressed Ty's last name. It was best to be professional. Something approaching professional. Jesus Christ, he never wanted to see Ty again in his life. And yet.

Ty smirked and held out a hand to a table in the corner, where a familiar-looking battered leather case sat. "You might have missed one. Terrible oversight."

Tony looked at Fury's pinched expression, at Bucky's tear-stained face, at Steve Rogers, still dreaming placidly away on the far side of the room. He'd only met Captain America a handful of times, a dozen at most -- and maybe only two or three times, out of the mask. He'd had him over for dinner once. They were acquaintances, really, nothing more. Comrades, in the way that everyone on the same side of the fight was. Calling their relationship a friendship would have been an insult to the word.

Rogers' chest rose and fell, and something in Tony's chest welled up and ached in sympathy.

He wasn't just going to let Captain America die. Even if he had to cooperate with Tiberius Stone to save him.

"All right," Tony said, his throat so tight that he could hardly get the words out. "Brief me."

* * *

For all that Bucky's face was streaked with tears and that he was trembling as he talked -- poor kid -- his report was remarkably coherent. They had been in battle, they'd been separated, and then there had been, Bucky had said, a bright light. Maybe some kind of new Nazi weapon. And by the time Bucky had fought his way back to Cap's side, he was lying there. Asleep. Just like this.

"That was two days ago," Fury said. "It took us this long to extract him safely. Our scientists' best supposition is that -- possibly inadvertently, but likely intentionally -- the Nazis managed to trigger Cap's kill switch."

"What?" Tony asked. A kill switch?

"There was a code. Hypnotic. An implanted suggestion." Fury's smile was thin. "You didn't really think we'd have built a super-soldier without a way to shut him down, did you?"

Had they even met Steve Rogers? Sure, of course, in theory you'd want that precaution -- but Tony had barely shaken the fella's hand before he'd realized that Rogers was one of the good guys, the true good guys, absolutely incorruptible. But he supposed it was necessary. In theory.

Tony made a face. "And I see the Germans have taken advantage of that."

Fury had the grace to at least acknowledge the point, with a curt jerk of his head.

"So," Tony said, "I'm assuming you also built in a way to wake him up." He glanced over again at the sleeping figure. "Tell me I don't have to kiss him."

 _Or tell me I do_ , he thought, very quietly, at the edge of his mind, and he could feel Ty's cool gaze boring into him, and he was certain that one person in this room knew exactly what his type actually was.

"There is a way to wake him up," Fury said. "And that's where it gets interesting."

"Oh?"

Fury nodded. "There's... a second serum, a drug, that will bring him out of this. We have Dr. Erskine's old records. But they're encrypted, and we're missing half of the cipher key. Richards is working on cracking it, and he and Banner are ready to synthesize the drug as soon as we have the formula, but Richards says he thinks the cipher is impossible to break and they need the complete key."

Tony knew Reed well enough to know that when he said a thing was impossible, he meant it. But he still didn't understand where he -- or Ty -- fit into this puzzle.

"So what can I do for you?" Tony asked. "You want me to help Reed out? Work on the decryption?"

He could do that. It wasn't like he hadn't had practice at Bletchley Park.

Fury shook his head. "No, Stark. I want you to get the rest of the key from the man who has it."

Confused, Tony stared back at Fury, and then at Bucky-- who jerked a thumb in the direction of Rogers' bed.

Oh. Right.

"I thought of what you did in Marvels, Mr. Stark," Bucky said, his high voice gone even higher with worry. "I remembered the dream machine. And I thought, well, if we could go into Cap's dreams, we could talk to him and get the key. I volunteered, but General Fury said he wanted someone who had experience with the DreamVision."

And that-- well, that meant him.

"Ideally," Fury said, "we want someone who both knows Captain Rogers and is familiar with this DreamVision machine." He gave a skeptical glance to the case on the far side of the room, and Tony didn't blame him. He wouldn't have trusted it either. "Mr. Stone has informed me that he and you are the only two people who have enough knowledge to safely operate the machine, and are furthermore the only people who have used it. He says that this particular model fits only two, and one place is for Rogers. That means one of you needs to operate it and the other one needs to use it. And of the two of you, you're the only one who's met the captain, making you the only possible candidate. Talk to Rogers. Get the code from him."

Tony glanced at Ty. "No funny business this time, right?"

"Cross my heart," Ty said, with a smile that made Tony want to scrub his own skin off. "You're supposed to get him to trust you," Ty added, his voice hovering on the edge of a sneer. "Get him to give it up." Tony... just wasn't going to entertain the layers of possible meaning there.

It sounded good. Plausible. Tony could almost see how it would work, except--

"He doesn't really know me," Tony said, holding out his hands helplessly. "I mean, sure, I've met Rogers a couple of times, but I wouldn't call myself his friend. And now I'm supposed to mosey into his dreams and get him to part with classified information and he's just supposed to believe me? Like I'm his best friend?"

Fury's one-eyed stare was baleful and unimpressed. "You're a charming fella, Stark. Be charming."

"He ain't exactly a lady, Nick," Tony shot back.

Somewhere behind him, Ty made a quiet noise of derision.

Not that that would stop Tony -- oh, it would definitely not stop Tony, if Rogers were interested -- but it would definitely stop Rogers. He was sure of that one. And Tony wasn't about to make a pass at someone like Captain America. He wouldn't have. Not Captain America. Not unless he'd been absolutely certain there could be reciprocated interest, and he hadn't been. And while Rogers had been friendly enough, when he'd met him, that was all it had been. Friendliness. Even though he'd had such a lovely smile.

"He likes you," Bucky offered. "He's always talking about how swell it is that we met you, Mr. Stark. He definitely remembers you. He's a real fan. Likes you a lot."

Huh. Rogers sure hadn't come off that way, and Tony had dealt with plenty of starstruck fans in his time. Rogers had been... nice. Polite. Reserved. Which just went to show, Tony supposed, that he didn't know him at all.

Tony spun around. "And I have to ask, _Tiberius_ , what's in it for you?"

Ty half-smiled. "Fame and fortune. My name in lights."

"You have that," Tony said, because everyone knew about Viastone. "Try again."

Ty's gaze went past Tony, and when Tony glanced back he saw that Ty was staring at the case.

"It's the last prototype," Ty said, very softly, and his eyes were alight with that fire of genius, the spark that had drawn Tony to him, the spark that could have burned Tony alive and Tony would have let it happen. "I thought you and your Marvels friends destroyed them all. Can you blame me for wanting to see it in action again, one more time?" He smiled a smile; Tony couldn't find the lie in it, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. "And who wouldn't want to save Captain America?"

"Probably you," Tony said, and Ty laughed. It wasn't funny.

"I'm full of surprises." Ty studied him for a few moments, and then turned back and handed Tony a notebook. "Here. You'll want to double-check your dosage. You wouldn't want there to be any mistakes."

Ty's hand brushed his, and Tony shuddered.

* * *

The DreamVision machine looked a little more haphazardly-built than the ones Tony remembered; it was an ungainly, boxy thing, with wires and tubes visible through the gaps in the ill-fitting case. Tony gave it his best dubious glance as he settled into the chair they'd pulled up to Rogers' bedside.

"Relax," Ty drawled. "It'll work."

The machine was already halfway to hooked-up; tubing stretched out from somewhere in the machine's innards to a needle taped down into Rogers' arm, and the somnacin compound was already flowing. Tony had done that part himself. There was no force on Earth that would let him entrust anyone else's life to Tiberius Stone. At least, not more than he had to. Tony had insisted on redoing Rogers' dosage calculations himself, from scratch, before he'd redone his own, and the notebook Ty had handed him was now filled with hasty formulas. And Ty had just smirked at him as Tony came to the exact same conclusions.

"You'll have to go fast," Ty said, like he was gracing Tony with a brilliant new observation and not the same fact that had instantly occurred to Tony when he looked at their drug supplies and thought about Rogers' enhanced metabolism. "Go fast, or go deep, where you can stretch out subjective time. Or both. He'll burn through this quickly enough that you don't have time to be leisurely." He smiled that predator's smile. "Just don't go too far down, Tony. I trust you remember what happened last time?"

"Shut up," Tony said, baring his teeth, rolling his sleeve up, and swabbing his own arm with an alcohol-soaked pad. Now was not the time to think about being trapped in his own subconscious. Or eternal nothingness.

Fury coughed. "Gentlemen. Please."

Ty had a needle in one hand and the secondary and tertiary dosage calculations on a scrap of paper in his other hand. His smile in return was also all teeth, and Tony wished that Ty had never understood him so well. "Still got a head for numbers?"

Tony tried to snatch at the paper. "Yes. Gimme."

It was more than he was used to having to memorize; his somnacin doses were vastly different from Rogers', but if he needed to take them deeper into the dream he'd have to be able to redose them both from within. There wasn't a way for a dreamer to signal out; he was pretty sure Ty had been working on one, but, well, Tony had set his research back by years, hadn't he?

Because he was still an asshole, Ty held the paper back for a few seconds before relenting and handing it over.

He committed the numbers to memory, mouthing them to himself until he was sure he had it. "You going to kick me up and out?"

Ty shook his head. "You're going to kick yourself out. Get the number, do whatever you need to do to wake up, and then we can work on synthesizing the cure and bringing the captain out."

Great. He hated killing himself in dreams. Well. It was for Captain America, he reminded himself. Maybe he could just wake up. It depended on the drug mix; the purer mixes just let him float out. And surely they had nothing but the best for Captain America.

"Remember," Ty added, "he's already dreaming. He's the architect. You can probably get away with modifying small items, weaponry if you need it, your own body, but the setting will be all him. Wherever he goes, you're going with him."

Tony nodded, leaning back in the chair and holding his bare arm out. "I remember."

"Good luck," Fury said, unexpectedly.

Bucky looked at him, eyes wide and round, standing out even more vividly with the mask on. "Please bring him back, Mr. Stark," he said, and his voice was very small. "If anyone can do it, you can."

Well, hell. Now he really had to. Tony Stark of Marvels couldn't let a fan down, now, could he?

He smiled. "I'll get him back for you, kid."

Ty set the needle against Tony's arm, and Tony watched him every step of the way, because it wasn't like he actually trusted him, but there were no other choices. When the needle was in, Ty flipped a switch on the DreamVision machine. The machine clunked loudly and then the tubing filled with the solution.

Tony could feel his eyes starting to close. That-- fuck, that wasn't the regular mix, he hadn't checked the goddamn mix--

"There's a sedative," he slurred. Goddammit, that was going to ruin everything. He wasn't going to be able to die without heading deeper into the dream -- down into raw subconscious, if he wasn't careful. "Ty, you son of a bitch--"

"Of course there's a sedative," Ty said, unconcerned. "Rogers needs to minimize how fast he burns through this stuff. But you'll still be able to kill yourself to get out; I'm cutting the sedative on you once you're under. Him too, in a bit. Jesus Christ, Tony, it's like you think I don't know chemistry. Recite pi for me."

If Rogers had a sedative too, that meant they were going to need to get him out carefully, bring him back up through the levels of the dream, change the mix as they went, and God, how like Ty not to tell him. Well. He'd worry about it later, he supposed.

"Three point one four one five nine," Tony mumbled. "Go fuck y'self. Two six five three five eight nine seven nine three--"

And he was out and down, gone into the dream.


	2. By a Strange Quirk of Fate

Tony opened his eyes.

He was standing outside his own house. Well, one of his houses. Stark Mansion, the one on Fifth Avenue.

What the hell?

Rogers could have dreamed himself into any place in the entire world, real or imaginary, and he'd picked here. Tony's house. It wasn't like he hadn't been here before -- Tony'd had him over for dinner that once, after all -- so he'd at least picked somewhere he'd seen, but it was a deeply, deeply strange choice. He couldn't have known Tony would be joining him in this dream. Of course he couldn't have; if he'd kept up with Marvels, he would have thought dreamsharing was gone for good. But apparently Tony's house had made some kind of massive impact on Rogers, such that here he was, revisiting it in his dreams. Tony shook his head in disbelief.

And then Tony glanced around the street in even more disbelief, because... that wasn't quite right.

The sky was a cloudless blue, and the air had that warm, windy bluster he associated with spring, but... something was wrong. The cars on the street were wrong, strange models he didn't recognize. A woman strolled by on the other side of the street, wearing a skirt so short it barely covered her hips, and Tony could feel his eyebrows crawl up his head in surprise. He paused and tried to consider this rationally. Okay, so Rogers liked to dream about odd-looking cars and gals with legs that went on for miles. It wasn't as if Tony was going to judge him. He could very easily see the appeal there, at least.

Rogers had repainted the mansion in his dreams, too; it was now a creamy beige with brown trim, and Tony was pretty sure that wasn't how he had left it.

Well. He might as well see what Rogers had done with the rest of the place.

The door was unlocked. He opened it, and stepped inside, and the air rippled around him -- and suddenly, he couldn't see.

He wasn't entirely blind, but he was wearing... a helmet? Armor weighed down on him. It didn't feel like the last version of the Iron Man armor he'd made; it fit much too closely for that. He held out his hands and looked down; he wore gauntlets that were somehow nearly skin-tight, red and gleaming, with points of light in his palms. His arms were _golden_ , metal clinging to him like it was fabric. His boots were red too, his legs likewise golden, both flexible; the only thing that didn't look like it could bend was the molded red chestplate, a light glowing at its center.

This wasn't his armor.

But Rogers was imagining him wearing this strange thing.

Maybe in this dream everyone wore armor. Tony tried to shrug, and he found that he couldn't quite, not with the way the armor restricted his movement.

And then he looked up and saw the painting.

The basic architecture of the mansion was the same. The color and furnishings were a little off. But there was a massive oil painting hanging there, right by the main stairs, where it would be the first thing anyone would see.

It was a posed, formal portrait... but for all that, it was outlandish. Like someone had hired an artist to paint comic-book heroes. In the back row was a man Tony didn't recognize, a huge, smiling blond man wearing a cape, of all things, brandishing a massive hammer, and looking for all the world like he'd stepped right out of a performance of the Ring Cycle. Next to him was a man in a mostly-red jumpsuit, his face half-covered, but there was something familiar about his jawline. And he was standing next to Janet Van Dyne. Huh. No, that was definitely Jan. She was wearing something strange, red and black, nothing like the dresses she designed -- but the face, and the smile, were unmistakable. Tony had had no clue that Rogers even knew Jan.

And in the front row of the picture were two men. One was Captain America, in full costume and clearly in charge, grinning broadly, like he was thrilled to be here, like he was proud of these people; he had his arm slung over the shoulders of a man in a red and gold suit of armor. The armor had a helmet, so about all Tony could make out was that the man inside had blue eyes.

Tony glanced down at himself and back at the picture. That was the suit he was wearing right now, the armor Rogers had dreamed him into.

In the painting, Captain America had his arm around _Tony_.

Well. Apparently Rogers liked Tony in his dreams much more than Tony had ever, ever suspected. For God's sake, he'd only met the man a handful of times.

This was good, though. He could work with this. He needed to get Rogers to trust him, so that Rogers would give him the code, and hell, if Rogers already trusted him, Tony wasn't about to complain, even though it was damned strange.

There was movement off to his left, and Tony turned and saw him: Steve Rogers, in red, white, and blue, shield on his back. The cowl was pulled back from his face, and he was smiling at Tony, bright-eyed. He looked so young, so much younger than the war-ravaged man sleeping his life away in the hospital room. Maybe it was the happiness that made the difference. His gaze was full of fondness and affection, like Tony was his favorite person on Earth and that was all there was to it. Tony almost turned around to see if there was anyone behind him Rogers was looking at instead.

"Hey, Shellhead!" Rogers called out. "There you are. I've been looking for you all day!" He blinked. "Maybe more than a day." A bit of confusion clouded his face. "I feel like I've been looking for you for a while."

That was normal, of course. He was dreaming. He wouldn't have an accurate sense of time.

Tony held up a hand. "Nice to see you too, Rogers."

And Rogers flinched. Hard. "Whoa, hey, careful there," he said, and his gaze went to Tony's palm, and apparently Tony had done something wrong just by waving at him?

Carefully, Tony put his hand down, and Rogers visibly relaxed.

"And what's this 'Rogers' thing, huh?" Rogers continued. "We're friends. You call me Steve. Come on. Just how hard did you hit your head in that last fight, Avenger?"

Fight? What fight? And what the hell was an Avenger? Was that him? It sounded like some kind of commando unit, like the Invaders. 

Well, it was nice of Rogers to dream him into the Army too, he supposed. Almost made up for that 4-F.

"Steve," Tony said, uncertainly. Rogers -- no, _Steve_ \-- smiled again. "I'm fine," he lied. "You're Steve."

"There we go." Steve's voice was low, soothing, reassuring. Like Steve wasn't at least ten years his junior, a kid who never should have needed to make captain in a war that never should have needed to happen. Like Steve expected that Tony would want to lean on him, to be comforted by him. "See, Iron Man, you're feeling better already."

He was glad Steve couldn't see his face behind the new mask, because he had no idea what the hell was going on here. At least Steve knew he was Iron Man. He must have filled that much in from Marvels. But he'd dreamed Tony into this strange, science-fiction version of his armor, and he clearly... thought he knew him, much better than he actually did.

Tony coughed uncomfortably. The noise echoed in the helmet; he thought it must sound strange from outside. He wondered if Steve had built him a way to get out of the armor. He wondered if the helmet came off.

Right. Anyway. Steve had been looking for him. Ease into conversation. Bring up the topic. If Steve already trusted him, maybe he could even start with the truth. He wouldn't have to search the dream for some code written on a scrap of paper or hidden in a vault in the basement. Maybe he could just ask. He could tell Steve he was dreaming. He could tell him they needed the code. It was worth a try, right?

"You said you were looking for me?"

Steve smiled again. "Yeah, I was. I had to-- I had to--" He faltered and then frowned, brow furrowing in confusion and concern. "It was important. We had to talk. We-- hmm. Maybe it wasn't you?" His hand, red-gloved, settled on Tony's shoulder; he was holding him at arm's length and squinting. Like Tony somehow wasn't measuring up in quite the right way. "No, it feels right, but not-- it feels like we haven't been--" He shook his head. "Tip of my tongue, I swear. I'll think of it in a minute, you'll see."

"Okay," Tony agreed, confused.

"Anyway, it's nice to see you," Steve said, the cheerfulness returning. "It's always nice to see you. Let's talk downstairs."

The basement of the mansion, Tony thought, wasn't particularly exciting -- but as he followed Steve down the stairs, he was open-mouthed in awe. In Steve's version, there were basements and sub-basements; the stairs continued even further. He looked around in surprise as Steve led him past a gym, a swimming pool -- _what?_ \-- and then some kind of briefing room, then a room full of gleaming machines with lights, then an infirmary, and then into a room that looked like it could have been one of his workshops, only ten thousand times more fantastic. Pieces of metal that looked like the suit he wore lay on the tables. The walls were covered in what looked like tiny cinema screens, but showing blueprints on them, and Tony couldn't see any kind of visible projector.

"Where--?" Tony began, looking around. "Where have you brought me?"

Steve stared at him like the answer was utterly obvious. "Mr. Stark's workshop, of course."

Tony stared back.

"You know," Steve clarified. "Tony Stark. Your boss." His voice was tight, and suddenly, stern, like this was an order, like Captain America could even give him an order. "If you tell me you don't remember him, Shellhead, I'm going to have to insist that we get Dr. Blake in here to take a look at you--"

"No, no," Tony said, hastily. "I remember who Tony Stark is."

So Steve thought he was Iron Man, but he thought Tony Stark was someone else entirely? What the hell was going on? He was positive that Marvels had made it crystal-clear that it was him in the suit. He'd posed on the damn magazine covers often enough, definitely wearing the suit or parts thereof, definitely with his face visible. It wasn't any kind of secret. How in the world could Steve think he was two people?

Well, he supposed that for the moment he was going with it. He was Iron Man, in this strange suit.

Steve relaxed, but there was still the slightest edge of suspicion in the way he looked at him. "Okay." He exhaled and his smile was more than a little rueful. "Sorry. I know you say that Mr. Stark handles all your medical care, but sometimes I see those hits you take in the field and I get worried, you know?"

He was clearly meant to agree with this. "I know."

Pressing his gloved fingers to his temples, Steve frowned. "I remember. God, the last time you went down, we were in the street and I-- there was-- and I was-- no, that can't be right-- I wouldn't ever-- why can't I remember? Why can't I remember anything right?" He looked up at Tony, eyes wide and wary, like whatever he couldn't think of terrified him.

Problems with recall, Tony told himself. Also perfectly normal. Steve was dreaming. He was probably trying to fill in his memory with other dreams -- probably nightmares, from the look of it -- and failing at it. Putting in some kind of horrific memory of combat. God knew they all had enough of those nightmares to last a lifetime.

"I'm sure it'll come to you," Tony assured him. "And I'm all right. I promise."

Steve smiled a little more confidently now. "Good."

All right. Steve clearly thought he was his friend. Time to broach the subject.

"Say," Tony said, leaning forward, leaning in, inviting Steve to exchange confidences. "I have a question. Something I need to ask you."

Steve smiled and likewise leaned in. "Anything. You know that."

He was so friendly. There was something more than the usual friendliness, some strange mix of a bone-deep knowledge that just didn't belong here and an interest that Tony might have called romantic had he not been dead certain that Steve Rogers didn't think about him like that. Hadn't thought about him like that. Not the last time they'd met, anyway. But Steve was interested now. He was definitely _something_ now. And he was still acting like he knew him. And like he thought Iron Man was someone other than Tony. It was deeply bizarre. Anyway, here went nothing.

"This is going to sound odd, I know." Tony essayed another shrug and almost managed it this time; the armor shifted it into a huge movement. "But do you ever think you're dreaming this? All of this?"

Steve frowned. Of course it was going to sound bizarre at first; of course Tony was going to have to explain. Tony opened his mouth--

And Steve laughed. "Oh, come on, Tin Man!" he said, grinning, clapping him on the shoulder. The contact echoed. "I thought you were going to say something really strange. Honestly, like I said before -- the concern's touching, but I know I live here now. I know this is the present. I'm not in the forties anymore. I'm not in the ice anymore." He shuddered. "Nightmares excepted, of course."

Tony stared. "What?"

"The nightmares," Steve said, and now he was starting to frown. "The ones I've been having since the Avengers found me. You remember; I used to be up almost every night with you. You kept me company. You told me I was in the future now. You told me my dreams were just dreams. Not that I'm having a lot of those dreams anymore, like I already told you. You don't have to worry about me. You know this." The frown was more pronounced. "I know you know this. You were there, Shellhead. You've been here for me."

"No," Tony said, urgently, and hell, his plan was derailed already and he had no idea what was going on but he had to keep talking. "I have no idea what _you're_ talking about, but you're in the forties. This-- this future of yours is a dream. It's 1944. You need to wake up. I'm going to help you get back to the real world."

For a split second there was terror in Steve's eyes. "Don't-- don't do this to me." He was pleading now. "The war's over." And then there was something in his eyes deeper than the fear, something Tony couldn't even name, some awful slurry of pain and regret. "The war-- God, the war-- what the hell have I done to you? I-- I can't even remember--"

To him? What in God's name did Captain America think he'd done to him?

"The war's not over," Tony said, as gently as he could, and he felt like he was killing the poor fella, telling him this, but it had to be done. They had to bring him back to consciousness. "I'm sorry. But you gotta come back, Cap. We're all waiting for you."

Steve's voice was tremulous, caught somewhere between belief and disbelief, like half of him desperately wanted it to be true and half of him -- just as desperately -- didn't. "All of you?"

Tony nodded, and he reached out awkwardly with his gauntleted hand to pat Steve's arm. "Fury's there. Your partner Bucky's there," he said, and Steve's eyes shone bright, like he was about to cry with joy at the thought of it. "Bucky misses you a lot. If you come back, you can see him." Steve blinked wetly. Okay, Tony told himself, this was a good angle, appealing to the guy's emotions. This was working. "He's right there at your bedside, I promise." Steve had never met Ty, so that part didn't matter too much. "And I'm there too, waiting. I'm out there and I'm here in your dream and I'm going to get you back to where you belong, okay? You just need to help me out, and I'm going to get us back to where we both belong."

There. This was going to be easy.

And then Steve blinked a few times and looked somewhere beyond Tony's shoulder, like he was trying to recall something. "No, you're not," he said, slowly. "You don't belong there."

What? Maybe the sedative had screwed up something in Steve's brain, because this wasn't making any goddamn sense.

"Of course I belong there," Tony said. "Hey, hang on, look--"

He reached up to the helmet and clawed at the bottom of it until he found what felt like a useful depression in the metal, which turned out to be the faceplate release. He shoved the faceplate back and luxuriated, briefly, in the feel of real air -- okay, dreamed air -- against the too-hot skin of his face.

"You know me," Tony said, holding out his hands, imploring. "You know who I am." He gave Steve his best encouraging smile. "See? I'm Tony. Tony Stark."

Steve was staring at him like he couldn't figure out whether this was a complete surprise or whether it really, really wasn't.

"Tony," he said, realization dawning bright across his face, a slow and wobbly sunrise. "You're Iron Man?"

"Uh," Tony said. "Yes?"

"I know this." Steve's voice was firming up, more confident now. "I know this. Why did I think I didn't know this? I've known this for years."

"Yeah, Cap." Tony smiled. "That's the spirit."

And then Steve's eyes went wide. "But I don't know this now. I don't learn this for a couple more years. This-- I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming this."

Well, whatever train of thought got him to the station had to be good enough, Tony thought. It was going to work out. Steve knew he was dreaming now. That was good. That was what he wanted. "All right--"

"And you're not Tony," Steve said. His voice was like ice. "Whoever the hell you are, you're not Tony Stark."

Wait, what? Tony held up his hands. "No, I'm Tony. I promise."

Steve took one glance at... Tony's palms, maybe? And then he unslung the shield. "I'm dreaming. I'm not awake and you are not Tony Stark and I sure as hell didn't know you back in '44 and this is _not_ the goddamn war." His mouth curled back into a snarl. "I think that sounds like something one of my old enemies would try to make me believe, don't you, Red Skull?"

And then he swung out with the edge of his shield, aiming directly at Tony's head.

"Whoa!" Tony yelled, flinging himself backwards and just barely missing the arc of the blow. "Look, I don't know who this Red Skull is, but--"

"Or," Steve asked, "should I call you Der Rote Schädel?" Well, whoever that was, it really sounded like someone Tony didn't want to be. Goddamn Nazis. He was a little bit offended that Steve had leapt to entirely the wrong conclusion, but in times like these, he supposed it paid to be vigilant. Bad luck for Tony, though. Steve's grimace now seemed almost sad. "You know, Skull, I almost bought it. You almost had me going, but you had to get sloppy. You just had to try to add in too many details. Too many lies."

Tony waved a hand in attempted surrender -- and bright light erupted from the center of his palm, angling up, carving a long divot in the ceiling. What the hell kind of weapon had Steve dreamed up for him? He would have given himself a goddamn gun but he didn't trust himself to be able to hold one with the gauntlet on.

He ducked down behind one of the worktables as Steve threw the shield over his head; spinning, the shield ricocheted off the wall before returning to his hand. Tony held up his palm, made the motion he thought he'd made while waving, and this time tried to aim it at Steve.

The ray of light bounced neatly off the shield, angled away, and scored a line of fire into the wall. So much for that idea.

He couldn't let Steve kill him here. They were probably both still sedated; it wouldn't kick him out of the dream if he died while sedated. If he died now, it could even send him into raw subconscious. He had to survive this -- somehow -- and pull them both down into a different dream to try again.

Okay. Somnacin. Doses for both of them. Dream them up. Think, Stark. He summoned up the numbers for their secondary doses, and then there were two syringes in his palm; the larger one was for Steve. He'd have to get close. Somehow.

While he was pondering how to do that, Steve leapt over the worktable and knocked him off his feet, sending Tony sprawling onto his back, skidding across the floor. He held the shield high; with one blow, he could smash Tony's face in.

Tony looked up and met his eyes--

\--and there were tears on Steve's face.

"No." The word was a sob of denial, as he stood there, paralyzed, and it was like he'd forgotten everything he'd said about Tony being a goddamn Nazi and was seeing him as... as someone he wasn't. "God, Tony, no, I can't, not again, please, I can't--"

Luckily, Tony could. 

He uncapped the larger syringe, sat up, reached out, and jammed the needle in high on the inside of Steve's thigh, punching right through the leather of the uniform. He depressed the plunger -- clumsily, with his metal-covered fingers -- before Steve could move away, before he'd even so much as noticed, in the fog of his shock about... whatever that was.

He hoped like hell he'd hit a vein. He was dreaming. All he had to do was believe he'd done it, right?

Steve collapsed, half on top of him. Christ, he was heavy. Vibranium rang out, as pure as a bell-chime, as the shield landed next to him.

"Well," Tony said, to the empty room, to Steve's slackened, dreaming face. "I have no idea what happened there, but that was entirely _fucked up_."

He looked down at himself. He was covered in metal. This was going to be a problem. He wasn't quite certain how to dream this whole suit off; he didn't know if Steve had somehow connected it to his repulsor pump, and he sure didn't want to find out what would happen if he dreamed _that_ away. Fiddling around with a catch at his wrist, he managed to release one of the gauntlets, which promptly rolled up into the suit's metal cuff as if it were fabric. Huh.

Barehanded, he slid two fingers under his jaw and found his own pulse, strong and a little fast. With his other hand he picked up and uncapped the syringe, balancing the needle against his skin, sliding it in. He was dreaming. He could do this.

Time to try to befriend Steve Rogers. Again.

Tony held his breath and pushed the somnacin into his veins, and then the world swam away.


	3. A Mistake I Won't Be Making

His eyes were closed. He was lying on his back, on a mattress. There were tubes and wires taped to him -- to his face, to his arms, to his chest -- and there was a blanket pulled up over him. There was an odd mechanical beeping, a rhythmic sound.

Tony opened his eyes. Hospital. He hated hospitals. He was already sitting in one, and now Steve had to go and dream him into another one?

The beeping was coming from a tiny screen next to him, like the one he had seen on the wall of the workshop. Captain America definitely had an imagination on him. More science fiction, huh? The little screen showed a whole lot of numbers and then wavering green lines, like an ECG -- Tony unfortunately knew far too much about anything that could be related to his heart -- but the image was on the screen rather than scratched out onto paper by a needle.

Not that there weren't needles. There was one taped down somewhere on his arm, he thought. There was -- ugh -- a tube in his nose. His arms were bandaged, from just below his elbows all the way down to his fingertips. The beeping noise sped up a little. Tony frantically patted at his chest, didn't hit metal, and then peered down. No repulsor pump. Just leads and a hell of a lot of scarring. Steve had apparently dreamed him minus the pump -- well, at least that apparently didn't kill him, in his dreams. He was a lot thinner than he should have been. Of course he could change his appearance if he wanted, but for some reason this was what Steve was expecting of him. He'd better keep it for now and see where this got him.

He wished he had that fancy Iron Man suit back.

His face itched. He put a hand to his cheek, felt around with his bandaged hands, and he discovered that in Steve's dream here he'd been growing a scruffy mess of a beard.

Apparently Steve wanted him lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by more futuristic equipment, looking like death warmed over. Lovely.

At least he felt fine. Well, he was a little hazy from whatever had been in Ty's somnacin mix, but he was basically fine. Steve couldn't affect that.

He looked up, and Steve was standing in the doorway. It must have been winter now in the dream, because he was bundled up, heavy coat down to his knees, scarf around his throat. He looked as if he'd just come in from the cold; his nose and ears had gone pink. In one hand, he was clutching a small bouquet of flowers, a bright little assortment of daisies. 

Steve's face ran through an odd mixture of expressions as his gaze met Tony's: dismay, hope, and more than a little shame. Like he was happy to see Tony here, but that Tony could have been better, and for some reason he felt awful about all of it.

"Hey." Steve's voice was soft, awkward, more than a little hesitant. "Can I come in?" He asked it like he thought Tony might actually say no.

Tony waved assent with one of his bandaged hands. "Sure."

The smile now was more relieved, and Steve stepped inside, set the flowers down on a table -- for him, Tony supposed -- and then turned and started stripping out of his winter gear. He was in civilian clothes underneath, slacks and a warm sweater.

"Where--" Tony cleared his throat. "Where am I?"

When Steve finished hanging his coat up and turned back, his face was shaded again with even more concern. "Oh, geez, Tony," he murmured, voice run through with sadness and affection, softly enough that Tony didn't think he'd been intended to hear. "You must be pretty loopy on all those painkillers, huh?" he asked, a little more loudly.

He took a seat next to Tony's bed, and there was so much caring in his eyes that Tony didn't even know where to begin. Sure, he'd found himself in the hospital before, but no one he'd woken up next to -- in any circumstances, really -- had ever looked at him like that, like him being all right mattered more than anything else in the whole damn world.

"Maybe," Tony said, grateful for the excuse. "You know, it comes and it goes. I know who you are, at least," he added, because he thought it might make Steve happy to hear it, this strange Steve who thought so much of him.

He smiled weakly, and Steve beamed back.

"You're at St. Vincent's," Steve said, and, whew, okay, at least he was still in New York. Dream New York. "It was the closest hospital to where--" his voice caught-- "where they found you." His face was drawn, tight around the eyes, and he bit at his lip; what the hell had he decided was wrong with Tony? "You weren't doing too well at first, the doctors said. Exposure and frostbite, and the heart damage, of course." Wait, Tony thought, Steve didn't even know he had heart problems, did he? It had to be a coincidence. More pain rippled across Steve's face, and he kept talking. "And then there's the, uh. The cirrhosis. They're saying it's a miracle you made it at all." His eyes were luminous, too wet. "But I guess you're always good at miracles, huh, Tony?" His voice rasped.

The _cirrhosis_? What the hell?

"Hey," Tony said, because no matter what was going on with that one, he sure didn't want to be the fella who'd made Captain America cry. This was maybe worse than the fighting had been. "Hey, I'm going to be okay. Shh."

He reached out and brushed Steve's hand; he couldn't feel it through the bandages, but Steve looked a little better at the touch.

Steve sighed; a rueful little smile spread across his face. "Sorry, I just-- I--" He stopped, then, and he took a breath. "I told myself I'd do this right. The last couple times we've talked, I know I've been-- I swore I wouldn't lose my temper, and I--" His gaze went unfocused. "No, this is too long ago, isn't it? I've been angry-- God, Tony, I've been so angry with you, but this is the wrong time, the wrong place, and this-- this-- I was never here. I wanted to be here, I wished I'd been here, but I was never here for you now."

Steve was starting to realize he was dreaming. Well, that had gone stunningly wrong, in the last dream. Tony would just have to try to keep him in this one. If he could do that, maybe Steve wouldn't deck him. Tony didn't want to bet on his chances of taking him in even a dream fight, in the condition Steve had left him in.

"You're here," Tony said, infusing the words with as much reassurance as he possibly could. "See, you're here for me now, isn't that right?"

Steve blinked a few more times and Tony watched him look around the room and sink back into the deceit. Thank goodness.

"Yeah," Steve said, with more conviction. "I'm here for you." He smiled. "That's right." He took a deep breath, marshaling up courage from unknown reserves. "And I came to apologize."

"Apologize?" Tony echoed, confused.

Steve took another breath. "I know that the last time I saw you I wasn't exactly kind to you. I know you-- you made some effort to elude me, and I don't blame you for that. Thinking about it, about what I said -- I'm sure I made it worse." His voice faltered. "I was-- I was so afraid for you, Tony. I saw what drinking did to my father, and I just-- I didn't want to lose you too, you know?"

Drinking?

Steve thought he had cirrhosis. Steve thought he'd tried to drink himself to death. What the hell?

That was... well, that was an awfully personal sort of thing to invent about a guy you barely knew, wasn't it? What made it even stranger was that it absolutely wasn't true. Oh, Tony wasn't any sort of teetotaler, but he didn't have a problem with the bottle, and he knew that wasn't some kind of alcoholic denial speaking.

"Lose me?" Tony asked, still bewildered.

Steve sighed. "I talked to Rhodes. He said they found you damn near frozen to death in that blizzard. He told me you said you'd pawned your coat to buy booze -- in the middle of the storm -- and you were huddled up in the snow, having one last drink." There were tears on his face now. "What's that if it's not losing you, then?" His voice was bitter. He dug his fingers sharply into his thighs. 

Dear God. Why in the world would Steve invent this?

"And I heard you were in the hospital, when they didn't know if you'd make it," Steve continued, "and I-- I didn't want the last time we ever talked to be an argument, you know? I didn't want my last memory of you to be me asking you if it was worth--" He stopped, with a strange expression on his face. "I mean, you telling me you needed a drink and me trying to yell you into sobriety. I know I can't make you change by willing it, and I was wrong to try."

Well. This was a mess.

"I forgive you," Tony tried, and he knew this had been the right thing to say, because Steve brightened right up. "And I'm not going to drink, all right?" he continued, emboldened. "You won't ever have to worry about that again."

Oh, it was a filthy lie -- he didn't have a problem, and there was nothing wrong with his current habits -- but it was what Steve needed to hear. That much was obvious.

"I just," Steve said, and he was shaking. "I just-- I didn't know where you were, and then I found out you'd been flat broke and homeless in a blizzard. God, Tony, you could have come to me. To any one of us, even if you didn't want to talk to me. Whatever you wanted. Whatever you needed. I'd have given it to you. You know that."

He tried to think of how a fella who'd been on a bender might answer this one. "I don't think what I wanted and what I needed would have been the same thing," he pointed out. "I had to get myself sorted out on my own first."

"Yeah," Steve said, on a resigned sigh. "I know. I just-- I wish this didn't keep happening to the two of us." He frowned pensively. "I mean I wish it hadn't happened. No idea what I'm thinking of." He sighed again. "Sorry. It's been rough lately, I suppose. But I'm so glad you're still with us." He smiled. "Don't really know what I'd do without you."

"You've still got me," Tony told him, just to watch him smile again. It was a nice smile. And it was nice that the guy liked him in his dreams, even if none of this made a lick of sense. There was definitely something there, though. Some feeling. A whole lot of feeling.

"Well, good."

There was a trace of that Captain America sureness in Steve's tone, like a detective saying the case was closed and that was that. Steve liked him, end of story. 

It was time, now, to move on to why Tony was actually here. Telling Steve he was dreaming hadn't worked. Maybe he could just bring up the subject of the code...?

"Hey, Steve?"

"Hmm?"

"I've got a question," Tony said. "Serious question."

Steve's frown was a little skeptical. "Is this about Avengers business?"

That was what Steve had called him before -- an Avenger. If the name was military, maybe in Steve's mind the code was too. Well, it was worth a shot.

"Yes," Tony said. "Avengers business. Definitely."

But that was the wrong answer, because Steve just leaned over and patted him on the arm. "Don't worry about the Avengers for right now, okay? The team's good. We're all good. Rhodes is handling the Iron Man suit just fine." 

What? Rhodey had his own suit.

"You should focus on getting better," Steve said, firmly. "Don't rush it. We'll all be there when you come back, okay?"

"Okay," Tony said. "It's just that there's this important code--"

"I'm sure it can wait," Steve said. "Tony, you nearly died. We've got this. Let us get this. We're your teammates. Your friends."

This wasn't working. Steve trusted him, but he wasn't going to let him do anything, goddammit. It was the exact opposite problem as the one he'd had at the previous level of the dream.

Time to try another dream. He had one last set of somnacin dosages in his head, but after that they were on their own. Oh, they might be able to go down further by themselves if Steve could hold the dream stable, but that was getting awfully close to the subconscious -- and Steve would have to realize he was dreaming and not think Tony was a Nazi. That was, apparently, a lot to ask of him.

But he did have one more dream remaining. The tertiary doses. He could take them to one last dream without Steve's help.

Tony looked around the room and spied a tray of food on a table. "Say, you think you could get me that tray?"

Steve brightened. "Oh, you want to eat? That's great! Sure thing! You'll have your strength back in no time."

The tray he set down next to Tony had some water, a cup of broth, and a little bowl of red Jell-O. Liquid diet, Tony supposed.

Steve looked at the Jell-O with more than a little envy in his eyes. "Did I ever tell you how much I loved Jell-O as a kid, when I could get it? We, uh. We didn't really have a proper icebox, not like they've got these days, so it was a real treat. Could only make it when we could chill it outside." His smile was faint. "It's a little funny to think that folks now don't understand that."

He'd read Steve's file, and he could put together the home addresses given well enough to understand the story of his life; Captain America had clearly grown up poor. But somehow it was different to hear him say it, and even more different to hear him talk about these things like he thought Tony might have thought everyone had their own refrigerator. That obviously wasn't true. Tony was older than him, for Christ's sake. Tony remembered all this better than he did.

"You can have the Jell-O if you want," he said, and when Steve looked up at him he put a hand over the little bowl, thought _infuse with somnacin at this concentration_ , and held the numbers in his head while reality rippled around him.

"You mean that? I don't want to take it away from you."

"Of course I mean that," Tony said, and pushed the bowl closer. "I just want a bit of the broth. Go on, have the Jell-O."

Steve picked up the bowl and polished the Jell-O off in approximately three bites.

"I feel funny," Steve said, and then he fell over in a dead faint, slumping forward into Tony's lap.

Well, at least it was less violent than the last dream. Possibly it was more bizarre than the last dream, what with him having decided Tony was a drunk, but at least he hadn't tried to punch him. Better a drunk than a Nazi, right?

One more try.

Tony reached out and tapped the IV stand next to him.

"Somnacin, please," he said, focusing on the last set of numbers he'd memorized. His one remaining dose.

He breathed in, breathed out, and headed further down.


	4. Like We Always Have

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, it was nighttime. The lights of a city -- at this point, Tony was willing to bet it was New York -- shone splendidly, false stars brighter than the washed-out true ones. From the angle of the view he was getting, he thought they were atop a skyscraper. There was no point in guessing which one; it probably didn't really exist. The room Tony was in was a living area of sorts, open and high-ceilinged, with couches and tables and more of those odd small screens without projectors on the walls. And, of course, the only other person in the room was Steve Rogers.

They were sitting at either end of one of the couches, papers and another odd flat glass screen-thing piled on the cushion between them, facing Steve. This one had a typewriter attached to the bottom of it. Steve's imagination was a strange, strange place.

Steve was reading one of the papers from the pile, not looking at Tony; he'd gone back to the Cap uniform, cowl pulled back, although this version looked subtly different from his uniform in reality, and also from the way it had looked in the first dream. Maybe there was a little more armoring, Tony thought. Steve looked older, too -- not exactly war-torn and weary, the way he looked now, outside the dream, but just... a little bit older. A little less bright-eyed. Like he'd seen a few more things that haunted him.

Tony looked down at himself. At least Steve had given him what looked like most of a business suit this time, even if Steve hadn't bothered to find him a jacket. The tie, oxblood in color, hung loosely around his neck. There was a large metallic suitcase near his feet, at the side of the couch.

"I know I said no politics," Steve said, looking up at him and smiling, "but somehow I forgot about the knee-deep piles of paperwork with this job."

Steve somehow folded the typewriter-thing in half, so the keys were covered, and then he laid the pile of papers on top of it. Tony watched as he slid the whole stack off the couch and onto the little table next to him.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, once again bewildered. "There's always paperwork."

"And I've done enough of it for tonight," Steve said, satisfied, and then he yawned and stretched.

Tony glanced around the room again. There were more portraits on the walls here -- some of Captain America, some of that fancy Iron Man suit, and then other people in bright costumes, strangers all.

What was this?

Steve looked up at him, and the smile on his face now was a little soft-edged. Caring. Trusting. The mood in the room was strange; comfortable, yet poised. Like they were friends who knew each other so well, but still with some tension. Attraction, Tony might have called it. Definite attraction.

"While we're here," Steve said, and he glanced awkwardly away and then back to Tony, "I just wanted to thank you, I guess." His hands were in his lap as he fidgeted. "For doing this. For taking a chance. And I'm just-- I'm really glad we're together again, Tony." He swallowed. "I know you said you didn't believe in fate, but for me it feels... right. Like we were meant to do this. Like we were always supposed to be together, you know?"

"Mmm-hmm," Tony echoed, while his heart pounded a mile a minute and his brain frantically sorted through possibilities.

Steve thought they were _lovers_? Steve had dreamed up this little world where they were in love and happy?

Well, it was the only thing Tony could think of that this could mean, but -- what the hell?

Not that he'd say no to a fling with Captain America -- he thought maybe he'd have to be dead to turn down the offer -- but he didn't even know the fella. It had been more than a little odd that Steve was dreaming the two of them as closer than they were -- like in that hospital dream -- but this right here was something Tony had never expected, had never even thought of as an actual option. There'd been no hint anywhere in their waking interactions that Steve could have wanted this.

Dreams were dreams, though. It didn't mean you necessarily wanted everything in them to come true, otherwise Tony would have taken a lot of school exams unprepared and naked. But this was the dream he was in, so he had to go with it. He'd leave it up to Steve to decide if he wanted to make something of it, when they woke up.

"I think even the kids see it," Steve added, and Tony's newfound confidence stuttered to a halt, because _kids_? What the hell? Steve was dreaming them in love, with children?

"The _kids_?" he asked, incredulous. His voice sounded weak in his own ears.

Steve chuckled; the faintest blush tinged his cheeks. "Don't tell me you haven't heard the team calling us Mom and Dad. I'm pretty sure Peter started that one." He was still smiling. "And, yeah, I know he's an adult now. Same for the rest of the team. Logan's older than me, even. Logan's older than _dirt_." Another chuckle. "They're not really kids. I know. But it feels like a family, doesn't it? Us. The Avengers."

Okay. Tony took a breath. Okay. Not actual kids. And they probably weren't actual lovers. He'd just misunderstood. They were friends, and in Steve's dreams they led these Avengers together.

"Yes," Tony said, relieved. "The Avengers. That's us."

Still, some part of him couldn't help but hope that Steve actually wanted-- no. No, he told himself, firmly. He'd think about that later.

Steve's brow was furrowed in concern. "Are you feeling all right there, Tony? You don't really seem like your usual self. Everything okay?"

Nope. No, no, no. Steve had to believe this was definitely him, because Tony was not about to stand for being walloped with the shield and called a Nazi. Again. This was the last stable dream he had. His last good chance at getting Steve out of here.

"Fine, fine," Tony said. "I just have... a lot on my mind, you know?"

Not that Steve knew how much that was. But Steve nodded in sympathy. "Yeah," he said. "I know." He smiled again; he spread one arm out along the back of the couch. Everything about his body language was open and inviting. It was going to work this time. Tony was going to get the damn code out of him. Steve tilted his head back. "I thought running the team with you would mean we'd have a lot of time together to talk, just like the old days." He brought one hand up to his chin and rubbed at his jaw with his thumb. "But it seems like we're always busy, and I just-- I worry that we-- I feel like we've been trying to talk a lot lately, and maybe we're not covering the important stuff."

"Oh?" Tony asked. Boy, if Steve had any idea how true that was.

Steve stopped and frowned, and his gaze darkened. "No-- God, no, Tony, this isn't right." His eyes went wide. "You never-- we never-- I wish we had, I wish to God we had, but we never talked until it was too late." His chest was heaving. "Until that day in the mansion."

"It's okay," Tony said, quickly. Steve was losing the dream. He had to do something. "It's okay. We're talking. I'm here. You had something you wanted to talk about?"

Steve blinked owlishly at him like he already was halfway out of the dream and into conscious recall. Christ, Tony couldn't keep him down in it. "Me?" Steve said, confused, and there was real panic in his eyes now. "No, you were the one who knew about Registration--"

And then Tony's vision whited out and there were words, typewritten words, in front of his eyes. Like he was reading them on a page, but they were floating there, superimposed over Steve's bewildered, frightened face: EXTREMIS: DREAMVISION ALERT: SEDATION 0%. SOMNACIN CONTENT RISING. DREAM MAY BECOME UNSTABLE WITHOUT CONSCIOUS INPUT FROM ARCHITECT.

"What the _fuck_?" Tony said.

He shut his eyes and pressed his hands against his eyelids. The words were still there.

When he opened his eyes, the words blinked once, and turned a sinister red. Most of them disappeared, but SEDATION 0% slid to the edge of his vision. If this was Ty's new monitoring system, it was a fucking _nightmare_. Maybe Tony was going crazy.

"Tony?" Steve asked, and somehow he'd slid across the couch and gotten a good strong grip on Tony's shoulder. "Tony, are you all right?"

"There are _words_ ," Tony said, his voice gone high in desperation. "There are words in my brain. I can see them."

Steve's face scrunched up. "Since when do _you_ complain about Extremis?" 

Extremis. That had been one of the words. If Steve knew what this was, then this was Steve's fault. Steve had dreamed some bizarre thing _into his goddamn brain_ and it was somehow interfacing with DreamVision. Tony hadn't thought something like this was possible, but then, how could he have imagined this? Apparently Steve could imagine this.

Okay. So there were words in his brain. Tony could feel his palms sweating. And if they were true, he was in trouble. Well, halfway in trouble. No sedation meant Tony could kill himself and wake up, easy -- but Steve still couldn't wake up, not without the code. And even with the code Tony had no idea whether Steve was still sedated. If Steve wasn't sedated either, and if Steve didn't know he was dreaming -- which he didn't -- this was all going to fall apart. Fast.

"First time for everything, I suppose?" Tony tried, and he hoped to hell he sounded something like his normal self. "I guess it just... surprised me."

Steve still looked dubious. "If you say so." He squeezed Tony's shoulder, and Tony couldn't help but lean into the touch. Steve was acting like... he protected him. Like this was what they did. It wasn't, of course, but at least it was nice to imagine. And Steve seemed to have settled back into the dream. He was holding it stable, even without knowing he was dreaming.

Okay. Okay. He could do this.

Tony smiled. "Anyway," he said. "I wanted to ask you a question."

Steve nodded and opened his mouth--

\--and the entire bank of windows shattered inward, in a shower of glass and a rush of wind. A giant red beam, like a science-fiction ray gun, swept across the room.

Steve locked his arm around Tony's shoulders and threw them both over the back of the couch. Steve rolled into an easy crouch; awkwardly, Tony picked himself up next to him. So much for a stable dream. Steve's shield was on his arm. Of course it was. Steve was bracing himself, shield high, like he thought he could fight. Like he knew what this was and could fight it. Tony stared at him in incomprehension. How the hell were they supposed to fight this?

"Suit up!" Steve yelled at him, over the roar of the giant ray gun. "Armor up, Iron Man!"

Tony looked down at himself again. He was still wearing a goddamn business suit. His own armor -- the armor he knew well enough to dream up -- would be so much slag against something like that. Steve was clearly assuming that there was better armor for him, probably that red and gold armor again. Something that would stand a chance against this. He had no clue what Steve was picturing, or how the hell Steve thought he was supposed to get the space and time to suit up while they were lying here being shot at.

"How the fuck do you want me to do that?" Tony yelled back, panicked.

Steve's eyes were wide. "How should I know? You're the one with Extremis!"

Extremis. Okay. Steve thought the creepy brain words controlled his armor too. His skin crawled at the thought.

Well, it wasn't like he had any other choices.

_Extremis_ , Tony thought, tentatively. _Armor, please?_

And then there were more words right there, floating in front of his vision. EXTREMIS: UNDERARMOR AT 0%. DEPLOYING.

Maybe a suit of armor was going to walk itself into the room? That would be nice right about now, Tony thought, as red light flashed above their heads again.

That was when metal welled up from under Tony's skin.

Tony stared down in horror as liquid gold rose up, breaking his clothing at the seams, washing all over his bare skin until he was coated in gold, like an unlucky recipient of King Midas' touch. God, it had come out of _his skin_. Maybe it had been inside him. If he thought about it too much, he was going to be sick.

SUMMONING ARMOR, Extremis said, and Tony watched as the briefcase that had been next to the chair fell open and pieces of bright red metal actually flew through the air and wrapped themselves around his body. It was like what he had been wearing in the first dream, but a thousand times more advanced. And also in his goddamn brain.

If he ever had to do this again, he was definitely going to dress himself in the dreams, Tony thought, as the helmet dropped down and his field of vision lit up with diagrams and numbers he absolutely did not understand. A section of it looked like targeting crosshairs, but that was as much as he could comprehend. What the hell did Steve think he could do with this?

Something that looked like a giant silvery robot was hovering outside. It shot another beam. This one was aimed low and chewed up the floor.

The building started to creak and lurch beneath them. Uh oh.

"Come on!" Steve yelled. "The Tower's coming down! Get us out of here and let's see what we're dealing with!"

For one confused second, Tony thought Steve was talking about the dream itself -- but no, he couldn't be. He meant that Tony could do something to get them to safety. In the midst of all this. What the hell was he thinking of?

"How do you propose I do that?"

Steve stared at him like he was crazy. "Fly!"

Fly. Okay. Steve thought he could fly. Well, hey, people flew in dreams all the time, right?

_Fly?_ Tony thought, hopefully.

FLIGHT ENABLED, said the words in front of Tony's eyes, and then his palms -- the same part of the armor that he thought had been a weapon, in the first dream -- lit up, circles glowing blue. There was blue light from somewhere on the boots as well.

And Tony started to rise.

He was wobbling, but aloft, and Steve just jumped up and wrapped himself around him in a full-body hug, like he was perfectly confident in Tony's abilities, like in his dreams they did this all the time. Tony's real armor couldn't even fly. But this was clearly how Steve imagined that they were getting out of this. Why couldn't Steve have normal dreams like a normal person? Why couldn't Steve have imagined that _he_ could fly, goddammit?

With Steve clinging onto him, Tony flew forward through the shattered windows and out into a nightmare version of Manhattan.

His first thought was that there were a whole lot of things on fire.

His second thought was: purple.

About the only thing that had no purple whatsoever was the giant silvery robot with glowing red eyes. There was a huge... man, maybe? He wore a strange zig-zagging purple hat and appeared to be _eating_ a skyscraper that Tony didn't recognize. Tony wondered just how many times Steve had watched King Kong; it sure wasn't improved with giant purple fellas. There was a blue-faced man wearing a lot of purple, zipping around in a floating chair and laughing. And then there were the giant pink and purple robots, stomping down the street.

Why couldn't Steve have dreamed them onto a nice beach somewhere? Why did he want even more war? And what the hell was the deal with all the robots?

Steve regarded the scene in dismay. Flames and beams of light cast flickering shadows on his skin. "Ultron, Galactus, Kang, and Sentinels? This can't be right, Tony. We had no warning." His eyes went wide. "I'm dreaming, aren't I? This is too much. This can't be real."

Well, it was all going to hell, but at least this time he believed in Tony. And if he still trusted Tony, maybe they had one last chance. Steve could reshape everything, take them deeper down into the dream, one last layer, and they could work this out.

"You're right," Tony told him. "You're dreaming. But it's a little more complicated than just waking up, Cap."

One of the pink and purple robots started stomping in their direction, and Tony wrapped an arm tighter around Steve and flew them both higher, and -- oh, shit, the robot could fly too--

Steve was staring at Tony, realization dawning in his eyes. "I've been dreaming. All this-- it's all a dream. But you've been in every dream. You've-- you've been in my dreams, Tony--"

"I'm real," Tony said, desperately. "I'm the only thing here that's real, and I'm here to get you out, but you have to trust me. Do you trust me?"

Steve opened his mouth and his face twisted in pain, like he wanted to say _always_ but couldn't make himself do it. "I trust you."

"If you want to wake up," Tony told him, "I have to talk to you, but not here. You're the dreamer. You're controlling what's happening. Dream us somewhere else. Please. The last quiet place you can remember."

Steve breathed in sharply, like the request had hurt him, a wound, a knife-stab. "You're not going to like that."

"Anywhere is better than here," Tony said, as New York burned beneath them.

DREAMVISION: SOMNACIN FLOW INCREASING, the words inside Tony's mind said. DREAM DEPTH INCREASING. PREPARE FOR ARCHITECTURAL SHIFT.

Tony focused on Steve's face, on the only thing that wasn't changing, as the world blurred around them. Then Steve's face blurred too, and everything went dark.


	5. The Moral Compass of Us

The room was all metal, and Steve was on the other side of the glowing bars.

This was a prison, and Steve was the one in the cell. He was sitting, half in shadow, slumped over.

Steve looked exhausted, weary; this was him as Tony had seen him in reality. This was the lined face of the man who lay there, in the real world, with Tony at his bedside. In the dream Steve's uniform was ripped, shredded, torn, bloody. There were a few scales missing from his armor.

Steve had given Tony the same Iron Man armor he'd just been flying in, and Tony fumbled at the helmet until he got the damn faceplate up. Tony suspected he'd have better luck convincing Steve of the truth of what was going on here if they could actually talk face-to-face.

There were still words in his brain. Of course there were. This time they read: RAFT CELLBLOCK SECURITY ONLINE. ACCESS LEVEL: DIRECTOR. ALL SHIELD OVERRIDES AVAILABLE.

Tony was beginning to get the uncomfortable feeling that he was Steve's jailer.

The bars crackled with energy, and behind them, Steve rose to his feet. He regarded Tony in silence, and then lifted his head and smiled a very small smile to himself, like Tony had proved some private supposition just by standing there and looking back at him.

"Well," Steve said. His voice echoed off the metal walls of the cell. His mouth twitched again, another worn half-smile. "You're definitely not my Tony Stark, are you?"

That was very much like what Steve had said before attacking him in the mansion, in the first layer of the dream. On the one hand, Steve was literally behind bars now. On the other hand, it was Steve's dream, and Steve knew he was dreaming it, and that meant he could very easily be free and armed if he wanted it. There wasn't much Tony could do.

Steve winced, then, like he'd just heard what he'd said and something about it wasn't quite what he'd meant. Like he'd said more than he wanted to.

"I'm Tony," Tony tried again. "I swear to God, I'm Tony Stark. What's a fella have to do to convince you, exactly?" He looked down at his armor-covered self. "I mean, I could tell you that I've got a birthmark on my--"

"I've seen it," Steve said, mouth twisted, like he couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. "At this point it's fair to say that I've seen every square inch of your body. Not in the context you're probably envisioning, though."

Well, there was a thing that hadn't ever happened, in any context. Tony frowned. "You're telling me that you've seen me naked -- and I would definitely remember if that were true -- but that I'm not Tony Stark?"

Steve shook his head. His face was contorted now into a pleading sort of misery. "No, I certainly believe you're Tony Stark. Just not _my_ Tony Stark." He looked even more wretched now, like calling Tony _his_ again had been a slip, a grievous wrong. "Like I said."

Right. He definitely wasn't following. "Then, uh, whose Tony Stark do you think I am?"

"Your own, I suppose." Steve shrugged, and Tony thought maybe that hadn't been the right question. "I'm explaining this badly," he added, with a grimace. "The idea is that there are a vast number of universes, and they all... differ. I've seen a few of them. And either I've wandered into your universe or you've wandered into mine, but you and I aren't from the same one. The dreaming made it a little hard to tell, until now. But we're definitely from different places."

Tony tilted his head at him. "How the hell do you figure that?"

Steve ticked off points on his fingers. "You said you were from 1944. You _talk like_ you're from 1944. The Tony Stark I know wasn't even born then. You didn't recognize the suit -- any of the suits -- or the Tower or Extremis or anything else I've dreamed up." He glanced briefly around the room. "My Tony would have known all of this. My Tony would have known where this was, where and when we are right now, instantly." And then he sighed, and on his face was the bitterest agony. "Also I've called you _mine_ four times now, and the one from my universe... would probably have punched me after the first one, because we're." He shut his eyes. "We're not anything, anymore."

"I don't understand."

"I should probably mention," Steve said, "that I'm dead."

Tony stared at him.

"Or dreaming," Steve added, almost contemplatively. "Could be dreaming. Could be both."

"You're definitely dreaming," Tony said, because he at least knew one goddamn true thing here.

Steve sighed. "Not like that." He met Tony's eyes. "Where I'm from, in the world I'm from, it's the future, as you would understand it. I've known you for a decade. And you're my best friend. You were my best friend. And we fought." He glanced around the room. "This is the Raft. It's a prison for superhumans. This is the last time I saw you. The night before my arraignment."

"Your _arraignment_?"

"Yeah." Steve's voice rasped. "Because after you commit treason and sedition, they still like to give you a trial first."

He couldn't picture it. Captain America, a traitor to his country? "What the hell did you do?"

"It doesn't really matter anymore." Steve shut his eyes again. "I surrendered before I actually murdered you, though."

"Oh," Tony said, and hysterical, disbelieving laughter was bubbling up somewhere within him. "Oh, well, _that_ makes it all okay, huh?"

He remembered the horror on Steve's face in the first dream, the way Steve had refused to fight him, in the end. _I can't_ , he'd said, and _not again_ , like he'd done it before.

"No," Steve said, very quietly. "It doesn't."

Tony looked at the way the glowing light from the cell bars washed over Steve's face, and he turned to the words in his brain, and he thought: _unlock_.

The bars disappeared.

"You're not a prisoner," Tony said, as Steve stepped back and blinked in surprise. "And whatever you did or didn't do, you didn't do it to me." And then, on instinct, he tried some of his usual brand of charm. He still didn't have a feel for the Steve Rogers he'd met before, but this fella -- yeah, he seemed like he wanted to say yes. "Besides, soldier, you got a real pretty face."

"So do you," Steve said, a little dryly. "The Tony I know doesn't flirt quite like that."

"I don't actually see you objecting," Tony said, and he thought that might be a real smile on Steve's face. "But at any rate, we have to get you out of here. Wherever you're from, I think we can agree that here is not where you want to be. And I need your help. I need the code."

"The code?"

"You have a kill switch implanted in you," Tony said, and Steve blinked a few times in incomprehension. "The Nazis activated it, and you passed out. There's a counteragent, some kind of serum that will wake you up, but the research is encrypted and we only have half the code. You have the other half. We need the code to wake you up."

Steve just stared at him. "There is no code."

"What?"

"There is no code," Steve repeated. "There is no kill switch. Maybe that's true in your universe, but no one ever did that to me. Implanted memories to protect me, yes. Implanted a kill switch, no. And there have been enough people in my head over the years that someone would have pointed it out to me by now."

No. No, no, no. This couldn't be true. How was Tony supposed to save him if there was nothing?

"There has to be something," Tony said, desperately. "Anything. You might not even realize that's what it is. Serial number. Any kind of string of digits. Something that feels significant to you. Something you'd want to protect."

Steve frowned. "My Army serial number is 54985870, but that's a very poor choice, as far as security goes."

Yeah, Reed had probably tried that already. "Anything else?"

Steve bit his lip. "A few months before the fighting started, you gave me an armor override code. That... well, there's definitely emotional significance. I thought you trusted me with everything," he said, low and bitter. "But it can't be the number you want, because the number you want doesn't exist."

"Humor me."

Steve met his gaze. "Armor override. Steve Rogers. Code 34-44-54-64."

"Armor server online," said a mechanical voice that wasn't Tony's, from the helmet he was still wearing.

"Gackpth," said Tony, and he took three ringing steps backwards, wobbled, and then the words in front of his eyes changed to WEAPONS LIVE, Y/N? as he struggled to keep his balance and not inadvertently shoot anything.

"Armor," Steve said. "Deactivate weapons and disassemble."

The red metal dropped off Tony in pieces, leaving him in only the bizarre golden suit. He felt distinctly underdressed and still off-balance.

"Sorry," Steve added. "You looked like you could use some help there."

Steve stepped forward, out of his cell, holding his arms out to Tony like he wanted to offer support and didn't just want to assume Tony needed it. Tony stepped closer, and he watched Steve's eyes darken, a reaction that even the somnacin couldn't dull.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?" Tony asked. Even though his own voice was barely more than a whisper, the question seemed to echo like thunder.

Steve's eyes flickered shut. "That... really doesn't matter anymore."

"I think," Tony said, "that you're a terrible liar."

He leaned in, slowly enough that Steve could have stopped him, could have moved back, could have pushed him away. Instead Steve tilted his head and moved in, until they were breathing each other's air, until Steve's wide blue eyes were all that Tony could see.

"Tony," Steve whispered, low and broken, and he kissed him.

Steve kissed like he'd been saving the kiss up for years and needed to show Tony all the feeling in him with the press of his lips alone. He put a palm to Tony's cheek, then slid his hand to the back of Tony's neck and drew him closer. Tony could feel Steve's fingers shaking against his skin; Steve's thumb rubbed little circles on the back of Tony's neck, on his jaw, behind his ear, like it was a thing he already knew Tony liked, an intimacy he'd already learned from some strange version of Tony.

But he kept trembling, even after Tony slid his arms around him and stroked his sides, long passes of warmth down his ribs, and when Tony pulled away there were tears on Steve's face.

"Shh," Tony said. "Shh. I'm here."

"You're not him," Steve said, hoarsely. "He's not-- he wouldn't-- not anymore--"

Tony slid one hand down to Steve's waist, bracing him. "But I'm still Tony. Like you said, I'm my own Tony Stark. I'm not anyone else's right now. And you don't seem to me like you have anyone. So how about I be your Tony for a bit, eh?"

"I'm dreaming."

Tony smiled. "So am I. Doesn't mean it's not real."

Steve swallowed hard. "Tony--"

"I like you," Tony said. "I like you a lot. And you look like a guy who could use some happiness."

Steve didn't say so in words, but he wrapped his arms around Tony like he couldn't bear to let him go, and that was answer enough. Tony wondered how the hell the Tony Stark on this man's world could just walk away from this.

"Do you trust me?" Steve's voice was level and quiet.

"I get the feeling you're asking," Tony said, "because you're going to propose something crazy."

By any reasonable metric, he shouldn't trust him. Tony had bet less on people and come out worse before. He'd barely met the guy. Assuming the story about multiple universes was true, he hardly knew his own universe's Steve Rogers, and he'd known this one for the length of three dreams. But being Captain America earned him an awful lot of goodwill, he seemed to trust Tony implicitly, and... well... he was an excellent kisser.

"Suppose there is no code," Steve said. "Suppose whatever brought me to this universe is what knocked me out. Suppose I'm just sleeping, and all I have to do is wake up. You came into my dreams. There must be a normal method of getting us both out."

"There is. Same thing that wakes anyone else up. You die or you fall, usually. We're pretty far down, and we'll have to travel asynchronously up through the layers of your dreams, since I didn't prepare for this." Tony swallowed hard. "But if you're wrong, you die. If you can't wake up, you stay here. You go deeper. You stay trapped in your subconscious forever. And I probably die with you. So if you want me to trust that there's nothing holding you down here, you'd better be damn sure, because otherwise neither of us are waking up."

Steve's hand rubbed absently up and down Tony's back, a comforting gesture, and then he pulled his head back and looked Tony in the eyes. "I'm sure. Sure as anything. Not sure where I'll be when I wake up, but I'll swear on anything you want that there's no code and no kill switch. I'm just dreaming."

Tony frowned. "I thought you said you were dead."

"Could be." Steve raised an eyebrow, unconcerned. "That sort of thing doesn't really stick, where I'm from. Happens a lot."

Tony thought about the fact that everything he had seen so far in Steve's dreams must have been some kind of memory, and he shuddered.

"Okay," he said. "I believe you. We can get out of here. Let's do this. Someone dream up a gun."

"You need us to get shot?" Steve asked.

Tony nodded. "It's the quickest way. Here, you're dreaming. Just make a gun appear or something."

The look in Steve's eyes was terribly, terribly lonely and far away, and he stepped back. "Oh," he said, "I can do better than that. I'm dying tomorrow. Want to see?"

Tony knew this much from his practice with DreamVision: if you got too emotional, you lost your grip on whatever you were supposed to be controlling. Thinking about your own death definitely qualified. And oh, God, no, Steve wasn't holding onto the surroundings--

ARCHITECTURAL SHIFT, Tony's brain said, and the world whited out.

* * *

Tony's first thought was _police wagon_. They were in the back of a little van, reinforced, metal-sided. Steve was wearing the same ripped uniform, and his hands were shackled together with something that looked a little more serious than just handcuffs. Tony looked down at himself; Steve had given him a strange black and white uniform. They were, once again, alone.

"You're the director of SHIELD," Steve said, like that explained everything, like Tony was supposed to understand. "And you were never really here. I don't know where you were. But this happened. This is the last thing I remember that's real. After that, it's all dreams."

"I don't understand," Tony said.

"They shoot me." Steve's gaze was still far away. "They shoot me, when I get out of this van, and I dream. Other dreams. That's the last thing I remember."

"I couldn't stop this? The me where you come from?"

"You didn't know." Steve's voice softened a little. "It wasn't your fault. I think... no, I _know_ you'd have taken the bullet for me in a heartbeat. I know that was how you wanted this to end."

Tony just didn't understand this relationship, not in the slightest. "Thought you said the two of you weren't friends."

"We weren't, by the end," Steve said. "But that doesn't mean everything else is gone. The feelings don't just go away, either. I don't just quit caring about you because I think you're wrong."

And then the van shuddered and stopped. Steve lifted his head, and Tony thought maybe now he understood the meaning of the phrase _gallows smile_.

"This is my stop," Steve said. "Stay close. I'd hate for you to miss it. You can be my security guard today." 

Someone outside threw open the doors, and there was light, a screaming, chanting crowd, and the press of bodies against theirs. Tony pushed forward against Steve, got a hand on him, kept them walking toward -- was that the federal courthouse?

Then he looked down, and there was a red light on his chest. Tony blinked.

"Laser targeting sight," Steve said in his ear. "Sniper rifle. This is going to hurt. See you in the next dream."

And then Steve stepped up, shoving into him hard, putting himself between Tony and the unseen gunman. The red dot was on Steve now, on Steve's chest--

He didn't even hear the gunshot.

* * *

And they were flying, again, above the burning ruins of New York, the robots in pursuit.

"Drop us!" Steve yelled. Well, at least he remembered he was dreaming now.

"What?" Tony called back.

He knew what they had to do -- take a hit or fall. But knowing that and being able to overcome the natural instincts of his mammalian hindbrain were two different things. Falling was the easiest way to go, but everything in him was chanting _safety_ and _stay up_.

"We have to fall," Steve said. "You know we have to. Do it."

He thought about how much this man trusted him. Someone who wasn't him.

It worked out to the same thing, anyway.

Tony shut his eyes, took a breath, held Steve tight, and dropped like a stone.

* * *

The calm of the hospital was a relief. Steve sat up and blinked at him, as the machines beeped quietly in the background.

"I know it's not really any of my business," Tony said, "but your Tony Stark, did he really--?" He pauses and gestures at the room. "Did all of this really happen to him?"

Steve sighed. "Yeah. He fell off the wagon, lost his company, ended up broke and homeless, and then he almost died in a blizzard. That part's real." He sighed. "He had a friend on the streets, he told me, later, a lady who was giving birth, and he didn't want to find shelter from the storm because he had to help her. The kid lived. She didn't. He nearly didn't." He made a sad sound, half a laugh. "Dead drunk and he was still determined to do the right thing. Sometimes I think he's more of a hero than I'll ever be."

"Oh," Tony said, and there was really nothing else to say to that.

"He's better, though," Steve said, and there was a very small smile on his face. "He's been sober ever since, for five years now. I'm-- I'm proud of him." He sighed. "Probably should have told him that, when I had the chance." He scraped his hand over his face. "There were a lot of things we should have talked about."

"Seems to me like you're trying, if the dreams you've treated me to are any indication."

Another smile. "I don't think you're the one who needed to hear it."

Tony shrugged. "You didn't know. And, hey, you're going back, right? Tell him then."

"I still think I might be dead," Steve said, uncertainly, and Tony didn't quite understand how this could be a thing Steve was at all uncertain about. It must be a really strange universe, where this guy was from.

"Well," Tony pointed out, "you were the one who said it wouldn't stick. I'm sure you'll get the chance."

Steve looked at him, wide-eyed, like he wasn't quite sure he wanted the chance. "You don't know what it's like. What it's been like. How we've hurt each other."

"No," Tony said, "but I know you love him. And I have a feeling he loves you. And that has to be worth something."

"Yeah," Steve said, his voice sad. "You'd think, wouldn't you?" 

Tony reached out and patted Steve's hand with his bandaged fingertips; Steve smiled a faint smile.

Tony glanced around the room. "How do you want to get out of this one? You want to dream up another gun now? Lethal drugs? Any preferences?"

With a distasteful curl of his lip, Steve shook his head.

"Come on," Tony said, "you have to do something." He sighed. "Fine, I'll go first."

He glanced over at the IV. It didn't take more than a thought before he was blacking out. The last thing he saw was Steve's horrified face, and _God, he really does care_ , Tony thought, and then--

* * *

In the basement of the mansion, he was still wearing most of a suit of armor, minus a gauntlet, and Steve was lying half-atop him, unconscious. Eventually Steve stirred, groaned, grimaced again, opened one blue eye, and then sat up.

"Goddammit, Tony," he said, in the voice of someone who had started a lifetime of sentences with those words. "I never want to watch that again."

"It was necessary," Tony said. "Also, I'm not him."

"That doesn't matter," Steve said, and he shuddered, a full-body shudder of horror. "It's not like you haven't already died in my arms before. But it's really not something I need to keep seeing. Under any circumstances."

Tony reached out and put his bare hand to Steve's face. Steve took another ragged breath, but leaned into the touch, quieting down. "Hey, shh, there you go," Tony murmured.

Steve turned his face into Tony's palm, and Tony could feel the smile. "How is it that you already know my weakness?"

"I think I _am_ your weakness, Captain," he said, and he watched Steve open his mouth and shut it again.

"Point," Steve said, quietly.

Tony dropped his hand, took a breath, stood up slowly, and looked around the room. "This is the last layer of the dream. Are you still sure you'll be able to wake up? Because this is it. Last chance."

Rising to his feet next to him, Steve nodded. "I'm sure." He glanced down at Tony's hand, the one that still bore a gauntlet. "You can kill us both with that, you know. It'll be quick."

"That's how you want it?"

Steve nodded again, a curt jerk of his head. And then, suddenly, he looked almost shy, glancing away from Tony. "Can I ask you for a favor first? Can you-- will you kiss me again? Please? Before we go?"

That wasn't even a question.

"Of course," Tony said, low and easy, and he held out his bare hand, and Steve stepped into his arms.

Now that Tony was in the armor, Steve was somehow shorter than he was, and Tony had to tip his head down until their mouths met. He kissed him slow and sweet, the kind of kiss that seemed suited to dreams, the kind of kiss that left him aching and yearning.

"You have no idea how much I've dreamed about this," Steve murmured against Tony's mouth, before kissing him again. God, Steve was good at that.

Tony laughed against Steve's mouth. "You're right; I actually don't. Also, you're still dreaming."

"I should wake up," Steve said. "I should wake up and go, and go home, and it's not even-- it's selfish."

"Shh." Tony threaded his fingers through Steve's hair. "It's okay to have something for yourself. I'm here. Just let me know when you're ready."

"It could have been like this," Steve said, eyes shut, and Tony got the sense he was talking to a version of him who wasn't there. "Just like the old days. You and me, Avengers and friends, and maybe we could have had this, if I'd ever-- if I'd ever told you--"

Tony kissed him again. "Tell him. Wake up, tell him, sort everything out."

"Okay." Steve exhaled hard. "Okay. I'm ready. Let's go. Still don't know where I'll wake up, but let's go."

"See you outside," Tony said, with one last smile.

He leaned in and pressed his lips to Steve's, wrapping his gauntleted hand around the back of Steve's head. With enough power, he could take both of them out. On three, he thought, as Steve kissed him fiercely, as the gauntlet whined with energy and charged up. If they were really going to die, at least it was a hell of a way to go. One and two and the light behind Steve's head was brighter and brighter still--

Three.

Tony fired.


	6. Our Little Conversation About Heroes

Tony opened his eyes. He was sitting at Steve's bedside, the DreamVision hooked up to them both. He took a long, shaking breath. This was reality. Everything he'd just experienced had been a dream. He was out of it. And if Steve had been telling the truth, he'd wake up too. Any second now.

Ty was next to the DreamVision machine, flicking switches, shutting the power off. Fury was sitting, motionless, observing the scene. And Bucky was on his feet, hovering tensely, concern etched into the poor kid's face.

"Did you get the code, Mr. Stark? Did you?"

Tony shook his head, and Bucky's face fell. "I didn't," Tony said. "The situation was... more complicated than I had thought. He said there was no code. He said there had never been one. He said he could just wake up."

"I assure you," Fury said, rising to his feet, "that there was a code. There is a code. All Rebirth records confirm that Captain Rogers was issued half of the encryption key, which he memorized and destroyed." His face was twisted in confusion. "Stark, you have to go back in there and get the code--"

"He can't go back in there," Ty said, and for once Tony was actually grateful to hear Ty's voice. "Not yet, anyway. I'd have to calculate new dosages first."

And then Steve's eyes opened. He glanced around the room, taking in his surroundings; his face rapidly paled in disbelief.

"Oh, hell," he said, under his breath. "You weren't kidding about it being 1944, were you, Tony?"

Bucky's grin was huge and relieved. "Cap! You're awake!"

"This is the wrong universe," Steve said, pushing himself up out of bed, looking wildly around the room like he thought that if he looked at it again it would change. "Tony, you're not supposed to be here at all. Nick, you never made general. Bucky--" He sighed. "There's-- there's a lot of things that you're not, anymore."

Bucky stared at Steve, betrayed. "You're not making any sense, Cap."

And then Steve's gaze lit on Ty, lit and darkened, and Tony stared, because there was no way Steve had ever even met Ty.

"Tiberius Stone," Steve said, grimly. He looked like he wanted to punch the guy. "I should have known."

"Excuse me?" Ty asked. "I don't believe we've met."

"I should have guessed Stone would be involved when you mentioned dream technology," Steve said to Tony, "but somehow I didn't think of him as being in this universe. Where I'm from he's in a coma right now."

"A coma? Me?" Ty said, incredulously. "I believe you're confused, Captain."

"You tried to trap Tony in dreams."

"He did that here, too," Tony offered.

"Yeah, well," Steve said, "where I'm from, he didn't quite make it out. Which as far as I'm concerned is the least he deserves for what he did to you."

"What do you mean, where you're from?" Fury asked.

That was when the second Steve Rogers walked in the door.

He was young. That was Tony's first thought. He was-- the age Tony would have put him at, maybe a decade younger than the man who was already in the room. He was scraped up, and his uniform was ripped, but he was unmistakably Steve Rogers, just as much as the first one was.

There were two of them.

Rogers -- the younger one -- managed to get halfway through his sentence before really noticing the scope of the problem here. "They said the general was looking for-- what the hell? How--" He stared at Steve, then down at himself. "What the hell is going on?"

Tony knew what this was.

"This is a dream," Tony said. "There are two of you in this room. I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming this."

Bucky's eyes were even wider. "You're not dreaming."

"We're all seeing this." That was from Ty.

"Yeah," Tony said, "and that's just what you'd say if I were dreaming you all up, too."

It was all a dream. The code. The mission. Everything. He'd been dreaming all of this, because now there were two of the same man here, and that couldn't be real. It couldn't be. Steve had said he was from another universe, and it had made sense, of a sort, when he was explaining it -- and hell, Tony had been dreaming, hadn't he? Sometimes things made sense in dreams when they shouldn't in reality. Because now there were two of Steve Rogers and that couldn't be right. It absolutely couldn't. What the hell had he been thinking?

Steve couldn't be from another universe, not really. There couldn't be two of him.

This had to be a dream.

Well, he knew what to do to wake up, didn't he?

He unholstered his gun, took the safety off, and set the barrel to his temple.

"Tony, no!" Steve -- the older one -- said, his hands extended, his face twisted in misery. He said it like he knew him. Like he'd had to talk him down from even worse plans before. He had the same look on his face that he'd had in the hospital dream, like Tony meant everything to him. "This isn't a dream, Tony. If you die here, you don't wake up. I can explain. Please. Before you do something you can't take back. Please let me explain."

"I'm very much interested in an explanation," Rogers volunteered. "I'm also interested in having Mr. Stark not shoot himself in the head, if you're looking for another vote."

This felt real. There didn't seem to be any more strange words in his brain. Maybe this was reality.

He let the gun sag away. He flipped the safety back on. It took him three tries to reholster it.

"Oh, thank God," Steve said, fervently, and Tony thought maybe Steve was still trembling.

"We were fighting," Rogers said, wide-eyed, "and I took a hit on the field, and when I woke up there was no one. Finally made it back here, and now... there are two of me?"

"There was a mix-up," Steve said. "They found me first, I assume. Probably thought I was you. And I'm the one dreaming, by the way."

"What?"

Steve looked around the room and sighed. "I was shot. I don't think they were ordinary bullets. I've been dreaming through my past, but I think somehow I hopped sideways. Into your universe. I'm not supposed to be here." He smiled a small smile. "Don't worry, I'll probably be gone soon. I can't exactly control it."

Rogers was looking at Steve like he was insane. Tony didn't blame him.

"Hey, Cap," Tony said, and they both looked at him. "Not you, you." Rogers blinked. "Do you know if the super-soldier program gave you a kill code?"

"Sure, yeah," Rogers said. "They did. Why?"

"Just checking." Tony grinned over at Fury. "Hey, Nick, I found him for you."

"Thanks, Stark." Fury's voice was dry.

Tony turned back to the Captains America. "Steve?" The right one nodded. "You're dreaming? Wherever you're from, you're dreaming?"

Steve nodded again. "Pretty sure."

"I think," Tony said, "that you should try to wake up. Wake up early. See where that takes you." He paused. "And I think you should find your Tony Stark, and tell him what you told me."

Steve's eyes clouded over. "Tony--"

"Come on," Tony said. "Trust me."

Steve smiled. "Thanks," he said, very quietly. "For everything." And then he began to fade, slowly, like the Cheshire Cat, until he was just... gone.

There was only silence.

He'd miss this Steve, Tony thought. But this wasn't where he belonged. He had his own universe and his own Tony to get back to.

Rogers was staring at the space where Steve had been. "I know I took a pretty hard hit the other day," he said, "but, uh, the rest of you also saw a second one of me disappear into thin air, right?" His worried gaze darted around the room.

"Yep," Tony said. This would have been perfect for Marvels, if he'd still been publishing it. "Definitely saw that."

Bucky nodded, his eyes wide. "Like you, Cap. But older, I guess."

"I saw it," Ty said. "Also I can confirm that I'm not dreaming, if you trust me," he added, with a pointed glare that Tony chose to ignore. He was patting at some object in his pocket; Tony had clearly not kept up with the dreamsharing research. He guessed Ty had invented some way of assuring himself of reality.

"I suppose we didn't all hallucinate him, then," Fury said.

Rogers stared. "You all really thought he was me?"

"To be fair," Tony said, "we hadn't thought that there being two of you was an actual possibility, so yes. Also I went into his dreams, and it eventually became apparent that he wasn't you. Either that or you have a hell of an imagination."

He stressed the word _imagination_ slightly and he watched Rogers' lips part and his eyes widen. The sentence didn't necessarily have to mean what Tony had implied, but, yeah, Rogers had heard him and slid right into the innuendo-laden part. That was... encouraging, Tony thought.

"Oh?" Rogers said. "What did he dream about, then?" The question was all bright-eyed curiosity, but there was something else there, something behind it. In Steve that had definitely been attraction, but in Rogers... well, maybe it was interest.

"I don't think it really belongs in the official record. A man's dreams are personal, I'd say." Tony allowed himself his best smile. "But let me buy you dinner, Cap, and I'll tell you about it."

Rogers smiled back. "I'd like that, Mr. Stark."

And yeah, Tony thought. Yeah. This could definitely be something.


	7. Resilient All Over

The phone rang, and Tony's dreams evaporated into forgotten unease and anxiety. He couldn't remember them that well these days, since the Skrull virus. He blinked at the clock until the numbers resolved. 4:37. Goddammit, he had plans for the day. He was going to do a little light construction work, upgrade the RT in Pepper's chest, transfer SHIELD to Norman Osborn, and then delete his brain to keep Osborn's slimy hands off of what was left of the SHRA database.

Okay, so they weren't great plans, but they were his plans, and he'd been hoping not to have to be in a room with Osborn on two hours of sleep, because the guy was already more than unpleasant enough.

Tony squinted at the phone display. No caller ID. Fabulous.

It wasn't any kind of Avengers alert -- he still had an identicard for that -- but it was Tony's private number, and the people who knew that number also knew not to call Tony on it at four in the morning unless it was a matter of life-or-death urgency.

Well, it came with the territory, Tony thought, and he sighed in half-awake exhaustion and reached for the phone.

"Hello?"

"Tony?" said Steve's voice in his ear, and Tony came wide awake all at once, his new and perfect heart pounding in his chest, because this couldn't be real, because Steve had died a year ago and this wasn't fucking funny.

"I don't know who you really are," Tony said, and he couldn't stop the need and the terror from leaking out into his voice, "but let me tell you that I do not appreciate--"

Steve cut him off. "It's me, Tony," he said. "I swear to God, it's me. It's Steve. I'm alive, I-- I wasn't dead, I didn't die, I was dreaming. It was Red Skull, he had-- there was some kind of plan, but I think I woke up before he was done. I fought my way out." The words were tumbling out of him. "I don't know where I am," he said, and he sounded very small just then. Lost. Alone. "Side of a road somewhere."

Tony groped for his laptop. He had six hours before HAMMER killed his access to SHIELD satellites, and he intended to make them count. "Tracing your phone." He frowned. "You're in... Maryland?"

"I'd believe that," Steve said, after a pause. "I think Skull was planning something for DC. I might have interrupted him." There was another pause. "Are you _typing_?"

"Yes?" Tony said, confused, and then he realized why Steve had asked. "Oh. I don't have Extremis anymore. The Skrulls took it out of me."

"The _Skrulls_?"

Tony took a shaking breath. It might have been panic. It might have been elation. It was like his body couldn't decide whether to trust this. Whether to be happy. At least this Steve couldn't be another Extremis hallucination. He could still be a Skrull, though. But even if it were really Steve -- that didn't mean Steve wanted anything to do with him.

But Steve had called him.

Maybe it was the only number Steve remembered.

"You've missed a lot," Tony said, finally. "Here, let me wake up some Avengers for you. I can scramble Carol's team. They'll come get you. They'll be thrilled to see you. We all will."

Steve was quiet for a few seconds. "Can you come get me?"

"What?"

"I--" Steve said, and then his voice cut off, choked by some strong emotion. "I want to see you first."

"You want to see _me_?" Tony echoed, because it was what he'd dreamed of for so long. Maybe he was dreaming this now. It couldn't be true. "You really mean that?"

"I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean," Steve said. "I know you know that. I had some... interesting dreams, while I wasn't dead. Clarified a few things for me. Made me realize I needed to talk to you."

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "That hasn't gone particularly well for us, recently. Maybe you remember."

"I remember," Steve said. "But it's going to be better. I trust you."

God. Steve shouldn't trust him. Steve shouldn't ever trust him again. Tony got him killed. And here he was saying everything Tony had been dreaming of. How in the world could he say this? How could this be him?

_Don't say that_ , Tony thought, half-hysterically. _Tell me you'll never forgive me. Tell me I've ruined everything. Tell me I killed you._

He wondered what it said about him that he'd have believed that.

"Tony?" Steve said, a little hesitantly, when Tony said nothing. "Are you still there?"

He could prove this. Oh, he couldn't just ask Steve for a passphrase, or some random trivia about their lives or the first time they'd met -- any Skrull could have learned that, for example -- but Steve had been under constant observation from the moment of his surrender. SHIELD monitoring. Guards. Cameras. Even the SHIELD esper division, keeping an eye on things. No one could have fooled all of them. And the man who'd died at the courthouse had been unmistakably human. So the last hours of the real Steve Rogers' life were accounted for, with no time to make a switch, and only the real Steve Rogers would have all the answers.

"You're going to think I'm paranoid," Tony said, finally, "and maybe I am, but tell me this: what was the last thing I said to you?"

Tony had killed all the recordings when he'd gone to see Steve at the Raft. No one else would have known.

"Tony--" Steve's voice was twisted in anguish, like he didn't want to think about the memories this was dragging up.

"Please." Tony knew he was desperate now. "Just tell me."

"You said I was a sore loser," Steve said, slowly, drawing it out, like the words wounded him to say, but it was right, he was right, and that was it. Tony had spent a year dwelling on that, hating that that had been it, that that petty insult would be the last thing he'd ever get to say to him, would be what he'd remember Steve by. "Tony, please, tell me what's wrong--"

Tony breathed in and out. This was real. This was real. Steve was real. God. Steve was coming back. Steve was here. Steve thought they were worth another chance, whatever they'd had between the two of them.

"You're real," Tony said. "It's you, isn't it?"

It couldn't be, but it was.

"Yeah, Tony," Steve said. "It's me."

He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve even the possibility of another chance. But somehow this was happening.

"All right," Tony said. "Give me half an hour to suit up and fly down there. Don't go anywhere."

"I'll be waiting for you," Steve said, and it sounded like he was smiling.

Norman Osborn could fucking wait. Steve was alive, and Tony could keep his brain one more day, and maybe, maybe everything would be okay. Maybe with Steve here, Steve would come up with a solution he hadn't seen. Steve wanted to talk to him again. Steve was alive. No matter what, it had to be better than the past year.

* * *

Twenty-eight minutes later, Tony was spiraling down onto a deserted road, gaze locked on to the figure in a red, white and blue uniform who sat wearily on the side of the road, a prepaid cell phone -- probably liberated from Red Skull -- on the ground next to him.

As Tony landed, Steve pushed himself to his feet, and God, oh God, it was Steve, Steve was alive, it was really, really Steve--

Steve tapped his own jaw, and Tony obligingly lifted the suit faceplate.

Steve looked at him in silence for a few seconds, like there was something about Tony he could read from his expression, could discern just by looking at him. He must have liked what he found; a smile curled about his lips, and Tony's heart lifted for the first time in a year.

"Well," Steve murmured, still smiling. "You're my Tony Stark, aren't you?"

Before Tony could think better of it, he opened his mouth and he was already talking. 

"I always have been."

Steve's smile broadened. "You know, I had a lot of things I wanted to say first, but I think we can move past at least a couple of them now."

The words were bold, brave, confident -- everything Tony expected from Steve, really -- but there was hesitation in his eyes, in the way he stood, a little closed off, nervous, maybe even afraid, like he was expecting Tony to run. And that was unlike him. He had to know Tony wasn't just going to leave.

There had been so much between them, but, like Steve had said, maybe they could move past this. If Steve could forgive him for what he'd done--

Maybe they could start over.

"I'm here," Tony said, and he smiled. "Whatever it is, I'm here."

God, he couldn't believe this was happening.

"Tony," Steve breathed. "I can't-- I shouldn't--"

And Steve looked at him, and all at once, Tony saw it on Steve's face. A mask slipped away that he'd had no idea had been there.

"You can," Tony told him. His heart pounded. "You can and you definitely should."

Steve stepped in, and he kissed Tony, long and lingering and passionate, everything Tony had ever, ever wanted. Steve traced Tony's skin at the edge of the faceplate, the only part of him that wasn't armored; his gloves were ripped and ragged, and Tony could barely feel Steve's fingertips, but he shuddered as Steve leaned in, pulled Tony's head down, and deepened the kiss. Steve's mouth was hot and knowing and Tony wanted to melt into his arms.

The war was over, and they were home.

"Steve," Tony murmured, against Steve's mouth. "Oh, God. Am I dreaming? If I'm dreaming I don't want to wake up."

"You're not dreaming," Steve said, and he kissed Tony again.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has [a post on Tumblr](http://sineala.tumblr.com/post/139991958114/fic-armistice-the-nothing-else-matters-remix) you can like/reblog.
> 
> The chapter titles are drawn from the following sources:
> 
> Chapter 1: Welcome to the Afterlife (Iron Man Noir #1)  
> Chapter 2: By a Strange Quirk of Fate (Avengers v1 #1)  
> Chapter 3: A Mistake I Won't Be Making (Iron Man v1 #182)  
> Chapter 4: Like We Always Have (New Avengers v1 #3)  
> Chapter 5: The Moral Compass of Us (Civil War: The Confession)  
> Chapter 6: Our Little Conversation About Heroes (Iron Man Noir #4)  
> Chapter 7: Resilient All Over (Invincible Iron Man v1 #8)


End file.
